Walmart Truckers Score $100 Million Lost Wages Victory In Court

You know what the next obvious step is, right? Walmart will eliminate their own fleet and let outside carriers do the hauling using drivers making $50,000 per year. That will eliminate all of the great paying $80,000 - $100,000 per year driving jobs available now. Outside carriers already do a lot of the work. It wouldn't be that hard to turn the rest over.

That's called ruining a good thing. That's what happens when you let lawyers convince you you're being wronged even when you have one of the highest paying jobs with the best benefits anywhere in the country.

Truth be spoken

Another thing, WTF is wrong with wanting to get paid for your work? On Call Duty (waiting for dispatch) is considered legally working. Being required to sleep by the government at a certain time is considered working. You guys have such low self esteem you think your time is worthless?

i go to line 1 plenty enough...we are not required to be in the sleeper for 10 hours. you can get a hotel. or a tent. or just stand on the corner. hopefully of course u do get a little rest... hey why not in the free air conditioned bedroom on wheels. then think about it. Petro in Dodge City AL exit 299. $13 for a shower... but if i get fuel and it takes me 15 minutes to get it. i get a free shower. even though swift didn't pay for it. my piece work average is roughly 52 dollars an hour for fueling up.

This topic reminds me of a story I posted a year ago about Kraft Foods Putting the Brakes on its Private Fleets.

Again, Atilla, this is a forum, not a "I'm right and you're wrong" society. I haven't run across any name calling by Brett, or most of the other participants. But this Atilla character has a tendency to get shrill and tells off people more than participates in discussion.

As for "Fanboy", It seems you might be jealous or something. there's no sub-group of special members that I know of beyond moderators.

You label yourself as "Rookie Solo Driver" (like I do), yet you come on here with such a know-it-all attitude. You can change your status like other drivers have if you want - someone has counted five companies in two years as "experience", if that suits your purpose.

It's summer. Lets all play and splash in the pool. We don't need any belly-flop or cannonball characters.

This topic reminds me of a story I posted a year ago about Kraft Foods Putting the Brakes on its Private Fleets.

That's exactly the concern I have with this lawsuit. Walmart is one of the best paying fleets around. If they believe it's worth recruiting the best of the best and paying them well then more companies may feel the same way and you'll see driver salaries rise. But if drivers continue to be perceived as a simple commodity where experience, work ethic, and professionalism don't matter then everyone will just focus on moving goods as cheap as possible and driver salaries will continue to decline.

Here's a graph I've posted before regarding trucker salaries after adjusting for inflation. And this only covers back to 2003. I started trucking in 1993 and my first full year in trucking I made about $40,000. Adjusted for inflation you'd have to make $64,000 today to have the same spending power as $40,000 had in 1993 and most first year drivers make in the $35,000 range. So in the past 20 years trucker salaries have nearly been cut in half when you account for inflation.

So the last thing you want to see if you're hoping to see salaries increase is a top-paying fleet like Walmart get disbanded because it simply wasn't worth the extra pay, benefits, and perks to bring in great drivers and pay them great money.

plus I know most of you guys dont live in California... 80,000 a year is not that much, and a trucker that grows up in compton shouldnt be forced to move to Alabama or North Carolina just because he became a trucker. (the average home in compton will run you about 1500 a month)

$80,000 puts you in the 73rd percentile. In other words, a person makes more than 73% of all the other people who file taxes. And that's just the U.S. - I'm sure those earnings would be in the top 5-10% in the world. If you can't live on that, there's something seriously wrong with your expenses.

But please, don't move out of California. Most of the people in North Carolina and Alabama probably don't want you moving to their state. That goes for Colorado, too. We all agree you should stay in Compton. Please. If it's too expensive there, maybe try moving to the central valley. Fresno seemed really nice when I was there. Rio Linda has some nice houses too.

i think you took my point the wrong way. lol. im a west virginia boy living in california. i got along perfectly fine with the Alabama folks today just fine. GO AUBURN!!!

I apologize for my snarky tone. Been running on recaps for the last week down to 0 every day, not that it's an excuse for being a smartass. Thankfully I'm on home time now, so hopefully I'll be more civil going forward.

Attila beat me to it... not understanding why you all begrudge other drivers wanting to be paid for all of the work they do...

They are (or were) already making $80,000 - $100,000 a year with the best benefits you'll find anywhere, had simple job duties, drive beautiful equipment, and get home regularly. Like I said, this is the kind of stuff that gets the best paying jobs eliminated. If owning their own fleet and paying their drivers top wage becomes too much of a hassle they'll simply eliminate their high-paying private fleet and let the low-paying OTR fleets around the country bid on the work.

It's the same thing many of the unions did over the years. Even though they were way overpaid for their skill level and job duties, had the nicest benefits imaginable, and great job security they did nothing in the face of growing global competition to allow their companies to remain competitive so the companies either shutdown or moved out of the country. They never stopped pushing for more until they no longer had jobs.

So naturally a caveman would think, "Good for them! Get all the money you can get!" But of course that caveman is going to discover that when nothing is good enough to satisfy you then ironically you often wind up with exactly that - nothing.

It's not always about 'take all you can get'. In fact, it's rarely about 'take all you can get'. You have to be aware of your circumstances and the potential risk you're taking by constantly battling for more, especially when you're in a great position already and you decide to bite the hand that's feeding you. And trust me, at $80,000-$100,000 a year they weren't eating Ramen Noodles and Mac-n-cheese, but they might be soon.

In the end, Walmart has other firms haul their freight in CA, or pay the drivers. They don't have to change the practice anywhere else. Look for dropyards in NV, OR, and AZ soon littered with Walmart trailers. Maybe they can buy out CA city, and turn it into a shipping hub.

Interesting discussion; FYI Walmart was advertising on Dallas radio stations about a hiring event this past wed/thur. One statement that caught my ear was that first year Walmart drivers are paid an average of $82,000.00 annually. I see quite a few US Express trucks already pulling Walmart trailers in this area. They must be in an expansion mode or they are losing lots of veteran drivers to retirement (why would anyone leave that job as long as they wanted to drive trucks for a living?). There is no indication of doing away with their private fleet any time soon, but it remains a distinct possibility if court cases continue to go against them, IMHO. I readily agree that Walmart drivers, in the total picture, are highly compensated compared to what's typical for an OTR driver. It seems to me that all Walmart needs to do is just re-arrange the internal details of the pay structure as to which activities pay a given amount of compensation, but not cause an over-all increase in what their drivers are paid.

Having said this, I acknowledge feeling resentment for uncompensated work while on duty or off duty. For instance, my current job pays $.40 a mile and requires me to complete a 488 mile round trip each day M-F. I am paid Practical Miles of 480 miles. However, my required fuel stop is out of route by 16 miles, so my hub mileage each day is 504 which usually takes me 9.5 hours to complete. So, my 9.5 hours of drive time earns me $192.00 a day, five days a week or $20.21 for each hour driven. It's dry van , almost all drop and hook with no appointment times and I can start whenever I choose as long as one round trip a day is completed. Not a bad gig, I know, especially when compared to what I had to deal with when starting out going on three years ago. But, all of you drivers know, this is not all that I do each day. My actual work day, start to finish is about 12 hours long. So, then, my hourly pay for all time on duty is $16.00, figured as all straight time pay, not so great after all. My work day routinely includes pre-trip, re-fueling, turn around time at the shipper/receiver, post-trip and then there is the 10% of time when live unload/live load pops up and no detention paid until after waiting for two hours (why is this???) and then at only $10.00 an hour. Oh yes, sometimes (not often) I have waited as long as four hours after I arrived at the terminal before getting my dispatch for the day.

Then, what about that idea of being compensated when you are off-duty? Well, the rules state that when a driver is off-duty, that means he/she is free from all job responsibilities and is free to go and come as he/she sees fit without having any obligations for the equipment or load. Yet, no company I have worked for sees it totally this way. You may be off duty for 10 hours while under dispatch, but they certainly did not want me to go off and leave their equipment unattended. I may have been off duty, but certainly not free to forget about my equipment or load. So, from this viewpoint, I think the Calif. Court decision is on pretty solid ground.

Nevertheless, these are just my thoughts; not claiming to be right or wrong; just opinions and statements where I think drivers are indeed getting short-changed; taken advantage of. If these things were remedied all at once across the board, it would not place one carrier at a competitive dis-advantage compared to others. It would, of course, affect the price of freight that would simply get passed on to the consumer. But the actual amount that these changes would cost the buying public would be minimal, I think. Getting average driver pay up around that $65,000 figure that Brett mentioned, as the inflation adjusted figure compared to what he was being paid in the mid-nineties, would go a long ways toward reducing the so-called driver shortage. Probably, the only way this will ever happen is when the Courts say it has to happen, that is, drivers being compensated for all time on duty or even off duty, if indeed, they are not, in every sense of the word, off duty.

Great post...

... low driver morale and resulting driver shortages are due to a general lack of respect for the drivers time. Even our brothers at Walmart would probably be appeased by rearranging how they are paid... they'd probably be happier with a slightly lower mileage pay, if they were being paid for all of their required job duties.

Jury Awards California Truckers $54M in Wal-Mart Wage Suit

Wal-Mart intentionally failed to pay hundreds of truck drivers in California the minimum wage for duties such as inspecting and washing their vehicles, a federal jury decided Wednesday, awarding the workers more than $54 million in damages and opening up the retail giant to additional penalties.